OberonEagle

Frankly I find more hurtful and dishonest those dudes who pretend to have feelings they don't have, prey upon you and play with your good heart... and then they trash you, if they don't get what they want from you. Even in MMORPGs there is who have met their RL partners. Surprising, they weren't orcs and elves in real life. Did they lie? No, but their feelings were true. They didn't join a game believing it was a dating app, though. Things just happen, sometimes. However, if you are intentionally looking for a relationship, what's your first choice? Looking around, in your real life? Searching for a dating agency? Opening OKCupid, Tinder? Or... Second Life? Here you are in an imaginary world, where everyone is free to be whatever they wish. You are among vampires, mermaids, aliens, anime, furries... even if you have an human avatar and you aren't roleplaying, nor you take SL as a game, people can still dream a little: almost everyone looks like a young top model without any trace of cellulitis or like a beefy gym guy. And maybe they also own horses, sport cars, luxury yachts, villas, castles... plus you can go to tropical beaches and surf all the year at any hour you wish. Is everyone lying here? Maybe someone to themselves, believing this must be a real life dating app and any profile part of the catalog... But if in the SL part of my profile there is something about F-15s that doesn't mean I must be a real life jet pilot. In fact, it's still "your world your imagination", even when you are basically yourself but you idealize your look a little and then you make virtual selfies or you go to do imaginary virtual things in imaginary places. And, you know, usually in the RL part of their profile, most people doesn't really tell so much or nothing at all about themselves. And voice verification is silly: maybe you ditch a woman who is using an alt and she is afraid to be recognized by her voice; then maybe a trans woman who has a female voice and would have easily passed if she wished, but instead she told honestly about herself first, but you call her liar and abuse her; finally you happily go to pixel bump a guy who sent you a fake picture and made you listen the voice of his wife or used a voice changer. 👍 On the other hand, if you were actually just looking for a body rather than a person and pretending love, that's karma for you. If someone instead loves me as a friend (or more) and would like to be closer and eventually gives me their trust telling me how they are in real life, surely I won't abuse them and their trust: that would be really petty and awful to do to whom loves you. You can listen to each other and I can understand that there are things that aren't so simple and easy to say even if you really would, so it could be difficult to say that immediately. Maybe one is disabled, but in SL he doesn't need a wheelchair; or is a lot older than me, but visualizing himself still 20-30 years old makes he feel better; or she is trans and afraid of the prejudice and harassment, but she uses a woman avatar because that's coherent with her gender identity and that makes her happy to be herself in SL, and so on (don't worry, not a big problem to me, especially in SL). Then of course there are also loads of guys who experiment with different genders or play "shemales" or just like to see a woman avatar, but that's a different story. As long as one doesn't try to play with my feeling pretending feelings that he/she doesn't have, you can visualize yourself as you prefer: male, female, human, furry, robot, whatever.